Too old to be ironic

“Charlotte didn’t just step on his foot, she trampled it. He didn’t care. He loved people who stepped on his feet. He loved noisy girls.”

(from Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by J. D. Salinger)

“Keep order. Keep order all day long, knowing full well that chaos will win out tomorrow, because in this sorry world, the night undoes the work of the day.”

(from Diary of a County Priest)

They are getting in the way. Pouring out of pockets, tucked in drawers and awkward desk spaces, littered about the floor, soaking in dirty dishes, balled-up in the corner, the receipts have more or less taken over. Who knows how it got this way. It used to be they gave you a little slip of paper when you bought groceries, and it would list the eggs, the cheese, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the spinach, the avocado, and the price, and the date and taxes and time and the address and maybe some other information, who really looked that carefully. You used to get these slips of paper when you bought something. So how is it that they are everywhere? Where are they coming from? I am holding in my hand a receipt for my dishes. Not dishes I bought, dishes I washed. There’s a receipt for that now. I find receipts after I finish reading a book. I watched Manhattan, and there was a receipt for recognizing Diane Keaton’s character’s nod to Lolita. The papers are piling up, is the point. And where are they coming from? I try using them to make notes to myself, but I keep on finding receipts for the notes that I write to myself, and conclude that this is not the way to go. These terrible scraps of paper won’t stop. They collect dust on the floor, it looks like they are growing pubic hair, disgusting white crotches scattered everywhere. I am trying to clean up, to force them to fit into the recycling bin, but there are too many of them, and nothing is going to work out this way, there’s too much, too where, how did. 

I found a receipt for an essay I haven’t finished. What if I start finding receipts for things that haven’t happened yet?

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

(from Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson)

Ben approached the men’s room door. Opening it, he found the lights were off. Awkwardly, he flipped the switch with his elbow and was startled by an incensed, naked, hairless man of sixty years glaring at him. Ben’s jaw dropped, and the old bastard let him have it, marching toward him screaming obscenities and gesturing with both hands. Ben blinked hard, and opened the door to the men’s room to find it empty with the lights on. He released his breath, and went into a stall to piss.

List of lists of lists:

Another Wikipedia gem.